Ben Bova - Orion and the Conqueror

“Alexandros will conquer the whole world,” Hera said. “He must, or this nexus in the continuum will unravel disastrously.”

“But Philip stands in his way. He has a new son now, one that he is certain comes from his own seed.”

“Philip will die.”

“At Pausanias’ hand.”

“Of course.”

“Not if I can stop him.”

“You mustn’t!”

“Why not?”

Her anger had faded. Now she seemed alarmed, almost frightened. But she pulled herself together, regained her self-control. Hera leaned forward again and smiled coldly at me.

“Orion, consider: if this nexus unravels the fabric of spacetime, everything changes. You will be torn from Anya just as surely as the Earth will be destroyed in nuclear fire a few thousand years up the time-stream.”

“And if I obey you and allow Philip to be assassinated?”

She shrugged her slim shoulders. “At least we will be dealing with a continuum we understand and can control.”

“What is this great crisis that Anya spoke of? What is happening elsewhere in the continuum?”

Her face clouded over. “Problems so intricate that not even we Creators fully understand their implications. Anya is far from Earth, Orion, light-years off in interstellar space, attempting to deal with one aspect of the crisis.”

“Is she truly in danger?”

“We are all in danger, Orion. The forces ranged against us are beyond comprehension.”

Her usual haughty, taunting tone was gone. She was visibly fearful.

“How does this matter of Philip and Alexandros relate to Anya?”

I saw her draw back, a flicker of exasperation touching her face. “You are a stubborn mule, Orion!”

“Tell me,” I demanded.

She heaved an annoyed sigh. “We cannot get out of this nexus until its flow is resolved, one way or the other!” Hera blurted. “We are locked into this placetime, Aten and I, and will be until the decision is made! Either Philip dies or Alexandros. Until one of them is killed, we cannot return to the continuum to help Anya and the other Creators.”

“You’re stuck here?”

Very reluctantly she admitted, “Yes.”

I did not want to believe her, but suddenly much of what I had experienced made sense to me. When I had translated myself to the Creators’ city it was empty and abandoned. Whenever I had left this placetime I had returned precisely to the same time and place again. If what Hera was telling me was true, she and Aten were trapped here also. That was why Anya could not come to me; she was enmeshed in this snare just as they were.

Without meaning to, without even thinking about it, I burst out laughing.

Hera’s blazing anger returned. “You find this amusing?”

“Incredibly so,” I answered. “Your meddling with the continuum has finally caught up with you. You sent me here to be rid of me, and now you’re trapped here with me!”

I laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks.

Hera disappeared so abruptly that I felt a jolt of physical alarm at finding myself back in the predawn cold of the hills near Aigai.

Pulling myself up to a sitting position, I waited and watched the dawn come up over the rugged eastern horizon. So Hera and Golden Aten are trapped in this nexus of the continuum, unable to get away from this placetime unless and until either Philip or Alexandros dies , I thought. Unable to reach Anya and the other Creators. Unable to help them in their battle out among the stars.

I got to my feet, wondering what I was to do. I could not let them kill Philip; he had been just and true to me. He was the one pillar on which the safety and prosperity of his people rested. Kill Philip and Alexandros would become king and immediately go chasing off for the glory of conquering the world. Years of wars and killing. To what end? Why should I help to make that come about?

Yet that is what Aten, the Golden One, had been scheming for all through the centuries since Troy. His vision of human destiny required an empire that brought together the wealth of Asia with the ideals of Europe. I remembered another time, another place, far to the east, when I was sent to assassinate the High Khan of the Mongols. Then my mission had been to prevent the Mongol empire from engulfing Europe.

Hera honestly seemed to believe that what we did here in this placetime had profound consequences for the space-time continuum as a whole. I had my doubts. I thought that Aten and the other Creators dabbled with the flow of the continuum, interfered with human history as a game among themselves, a pastime of the gods. They saw the human race as their creation, their playthings. Wars, empires, murder and human misery were simply amusements for them.

Yet Hera seemed frightened enough. And Anya was in danger, she said. Somewhere out among the stars Anya was fighting a battle for her life.

I shook my head. Maybe Hera was right: it was all beyond my comprehension. Yet I knew that what I was about to do would be pivotal. Aten and the other so-called gods had created me and a handful of other warriors to serve them, to be sent to specific critical points in the space-time continuum and alter the flow of events for the benefit of our Creators.

They created us, but we created them. I remembered it fully now. I remembered being sent back into the Ice Age to wipe out the Neanderthals. I remembered Anya taking human form to help me and the handful of creatures Aten had sent on that genocidal mission. I remembered how we survived the battles and the cold of centuries-long winter. How we peopled the earth. How we became the human race. How our descendants in the distant future became the Creators who made us and sent us back in time to start the chain of events that would ultimately lead to themselves.

All this I remembered as I stood in the chilly dawn of the worn, stony hills. But nothing in my newfound memories told me what I should do next. Nothing except the unshakable realization that Anya was the only one among the Creators to care enough about any of us to share our dangers, our pains, our fate.

I loved her. That much I knew without question. I thought she loved me. And she was in danger, far from this place and time.

The whinny of my horse snapped me out of my reverie. I had left the steed loosely tethered to a scraggly bush so that it could reach the sparse grass growing among the rocks without wandering off too far.

It had sensed someone approaching, I suspected. I crawled up atop one of the bigger boulders and, flat on my belly, scanned the slope of the rocky hill below.

Sure enough, there was Harkan in the armor of the royal guard, coming up the slope. He was alone. A pair of spears was tied to his mount’s side and his sword rested against his hip. His helmet was tipped back on his head. He was peering at the hard stony ground, looking for some sign of me. If I just remained where I was he would pass me by a hundred yards or so and never know I was near. As long as my horse kept silent.

I decided, though, to keep the bargain I had made with him. Scrambling to my feet I called out his name. His head jerked up and he raised one hand over his eyes. The sun was at my back.

“Orion,” he called back.

By the time I had climbed down from the boulder he had dismounted and was walking up to me, leading his horse with one hand.

We clasped forearms.

“I brought some biscuits and cheese,” Harkan said. “I thought you might be hungry.”

“Good. Let’s have breakfast. It might look suspicious if you brought me in too early in the day.”

He made a small smile and went to the pack his horse carried. There was a skin of wine in the pack, too. And a handful of figs. The sun was getting high in the morning sky by the time we finished. I stood up, wiping my hands on the hem of my chiton, and saw that rain clouds were building up in the east.